Thursday, September 8, 2011

I've studies central African history, back in college. Surely it can't be here.

This is Simone again. Talking about the temple... thing. It's slick and grimy, like no stone that I've ever seen. There's something really wrong in the air, in the forest, in every goddamn thing. I hoped that this'd all be a bit more Indiana Jones and a little less Bram Stoker. The trees are utterly silent. There are bugs, but the bugs don't make enough noise. Their buzzing is muted, as though it was really coming from far away. The boss hates Dande, I mean, Ibola does as well, but he's become totally obsessed with getting into the temple (it's not a pyramid, not here.) I mean, 'Bola has a goal in all this-- her son's probably in there, with whatever shape he has left, so she's got a reason to plunge into the dark, right? Boss' only reason is that there might be a clue left somewhere in there by Dande. They're both tight as knots. Ibola keeps staring at this big old blank bit of wall, glaring at it. The boss has been wandering around the sides and kicking it and talking to it. Like Lord of the Rings, kinda.

What we know is that the kids didn't get stopped by the door/wall thing. The blank space we think might be a door doesn't seem to have ever been moved, the footprints haven't been touched. There doesn't seem to be anything that indicates that the wall moves at all, down or in or out. The brush seems to taper right next to the blank bit of wall, and sortof grows into it, rather than touch the blank face.

Don and I've been thinking about it. I think one might be able to just kinda... move through the wall I guess? I'm definitely not sure whether anyone else'll go for my idea, because, well, it's a bit fantastic isn't it? Walls that don't really exist, or only exist if you think about them or something. But screw them, I guess. I'm not really certain about reality anymore, what with all these conspiracy theories and things. I don't know what to believe. So I guess I'm going to go try and walk through the wall and see what happens. I'll probably end up walking into a solid bit of rock, but whatever.

I just want to figure it out. I don't want to be here anymore. I hate this place.

Monday, September 5, 2011

We've been walking for about two weeks and the change was so gradual I didn't even notice it. Don and Ibola live here-ish and I think even Simone picked up on the sheer wrongness faster than I did. We walked long enough to get through the woods several times. Maybe we were going in circles, I honestly couldn't tell. The sounds of the forest kinda fill your head to the point where I started blanking things out. The noise left a lot of time for awkward silence, with Don and Simone occasionally bobbing into the distance. He turned to Simone as the most competent/masculine in the group, myself being "useless" and Ibola "overemotional". This only made things more awkward, as there are more layers of awkward between myself and Ibola than I dare contemplate. He and Simone walked ahead and whispered together in hushed tones.

I asked Simone what they'd been talking about. She told me that Don thought that it was "trop silent" (too quiet). I was dumbfounded by the statement at the time, not checking my privilege or my ignorance. The jungle at that time was one of the most alive places I'd ever been. She shook her head and said she thought the forest was changing too. The days went on, and I honestly didn't see anything changing. We were still covered in bugs by day and eaten alive by mosquitoes at night.

We were paused by Don for the first time last Tuesday. Don gestured to Simone and the pair of them walked ahead. Ibola and I sat in a clearing awkwardly, left dumb and deaf to the other one's thoughts. Ibola stood up suddenly and left me alone with the silence. The idea of the silence hit me as Ibola returned. She held a red flower in one hand and some kind of dead rodent in the other. I knew by her expression that she hadn't killed the rat. It was tied up with its own intestines and its eyes were bulging out of its hand. Ibola and I locked eyes.

He buried the rat and burnt the flower, finishing up just as Don and Simone returned. Simone told me that she thought "we found the kids. Or at least the place they might be." We followed Simone and Don down the path they made in the woods, and came to an overlook above a vast expanse of jungle. A massive, greasy black pyramid pushed its way through the matted jungle, covered in vines and plants. It looked like it had been abandoned for millenia. Lining its sides were grotesque statues of something that my mind slips away from like a scared child.

We spent another four or five days getting closer to the pyramid. This place buzzes, but it's not alive. Nothing but insects. The dead animals are getting larger, but most of the time we come across unidentifiable bits of bone and ichor. We've slept outside the wretched place for the last few nights, trying to find a way in. The footprints lead up to a blank slate of wall, and I have no clue how to get in. In any case, I doubt we'll have much internet if we get inside-- this is the first time I've been connected to a satellite in weeks.